


Children in Pieces

by GryfoTheGreat



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Teenage Dorks, Teenage Drama, or 'i project my academic worries onto bellamy and clarke'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:46:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3521159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GryfoTheGreat/pseuds/GryfoTheGreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At Mt. Weather Academy, the teachers say only two things are important; your grades, and you. The students say only two things are important; Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake.<br/>Griffin? She's a prospective doctor, she's the captain of the football team and the junior debate team, she got suspended for knocking Finn Collins unconscious and she lost student of the year.<br/>Blake? He's the captain of the senior debate team, he's student of the year and student council president, he's slept with every girl and some of the guys in the school and he has no idea what he wants to do with his life.<br/>The both of them together? They'd probably conquer the world, if they stopped fighting for long enough to have a civil conversation.<br/>But they won't, so the world is safe. The same cannot be said for Mt. Weather.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. my ankle's busted and imma bust you

**Author's Note:**

> Bellamy is probably about to graduate, Clarke is two years behind him. Age gaps and high school AUs do not compute. I may be rough on some of the details, because my native school system is wildly different from America's.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke has a non-neat day, and Bellamy is her knight in sour armour. Good thing they get along… right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the prompt “I twisted my ankle and you’re the only one here strong enough to carry me to the nurse’s office but we’re both really awkward” AU from barbelzoa on Tumblr.

Clarke likes to think of herself as neat. Orderly, even. Her desk is the only exception, generally being a confusion of books, but her filing system has been described by Raven as 'obsessively well-sequenced', her wardrobe is better organised than a fashion designer's and every single song on her iPod has all its details filled in, from name to genre.

Today is not a neat day.

She shoves her gear into the bag, not even taking the time to fold it, and plonks her mud-encrusted football boots in on top of her sweat-sodden skins. Her uniform chafes against her sticky skin, and her hair is sliding out of her hair bobble, strand by damp strand. She knows she's being childish, but the coach kept her out in the rain for an extra ten minutes to give out to her for hogging the ball and 'not being a team player' even though that Roma girl is even worse than her, and when she got back into the locker room the rest of the girls were either gone or in the shower. Clarke sat in the corner, fumed, almost yanked poor Mel out of the shower when she finished up and stood under the flow for fifteen minutes, wasting copious amounts of hot water. Whatever. She wouldn't have to use so much hot water if they actually turned on the heating every once in a while.

With everything safely stowed away, Clarke stomps out of the locker room. The rain has lightened to a soft drizzle; the water is soothing on her heated skin, and she feels her temper begin to ebb away until-

"Ow!" Her ankle decides to give way, leaving her kneeling on the cracked concrete path hoping that she hasn't torn her tights. She prods at it, eliciting a hiss of pain when her fingers find the ligament.  _Mom would be proud,_  she thinks dully.  _Seventeen and already diagnosing like a proper doctor_.

She wishes, for a sudden moment, that her mother was here; she'd know what to do, can treat a sprained ankle with her eyes closed. But Abby Griffin is in a far away by Jaha's side, and this particular corner of the campus is vacant of anything but scrubby grass, empty bottles of Coke, and crude graffiti.

She knows she oughtn't put pressure on it, but she has no choice. Class has started by now and her friends won't get her call, and even if she texts them the teachers won't let them out of class, not after the pencilcase incident. (Finn’s fault - then again, a lot of things are.) Clarke rises with a wince, and starts to take lopsided, mincing steps up the path. The distance widens immeasurably with each limp forward, and Clarke crouches down again, gritting her teeth as the ligament stretches. The grey of the concrete wavers before her, little pebbles digging into her palms.

"Griffin? That you?"

With that, Clarke's day goes from awful to terrible. That stupid drawl belongs to none other than Bellamy Blake, Student Council President; the guy who won an international award for his essay on the role of women in the reign of Emperor Augustus, who beat her out for Student of the Year last year and whose senior debate team just about thrashed her own junior one two weeks ago in the intra-school competition.

"Blake," she replies, refusing to meet his eyes as she gradually straightens up, ankle protesting. "What are you doing out here?" The only building out here is the women's locker room. Last time she checked, Blake was rather definitely male and indicated no preference to be otherwise, so he has absolutely no reason to be here.

"Octavia forgot her gumshield." He stuffs his hands into his pockets. "You okay?"

"Fine," she manages. "Don't let me keep you." She takes a few halting steps, hoping that Blake will be, for once, less than his incredibly perceptive self and won't notice her stilted gait.

"Must be something wrong, Griffin. You're never civil to me unless we're about to start having fundamental differences of opinion." He blocks her path easily.

She throws a look at him. "Locker room's the other way."

"You sure nothing's wrong?" He tilts his head to the side and, if she concentrates, she can see the barest hint of a grin softening the line of his lips.

"Apart from you?" This is exactly why she hates Bellamy Blake; he derails her train of rational thought and turns her into this snide, immature little girl. Ugh. "I'm late. I have to get back to class. If you don't get out of the way now, I'm telling your sister that you detained me."

The threat of Octavia works, and he raises his hands. "Fine, fine. Move along, you're missing circular motion."

Clarke fails to dignify him with a response and moves on.

She makes it three metres before her leg folds beneath her. She crumples with a cry of pain, and in a few long strides Blake is at her side, all big concerned brown eyes and secure hands on her shoulders. "I knew there was something wrong."

"My ankle," she gasps. "Twisted it in training."

"You didn't go to your coach?"

"Didn't hurt then. Too busy yelling at me." She rolls her eyes.

"Not playing as part of the team?" Her raised eyebrow asks the question for her. "I know, Griffin. You're too like me for it to have been anything else."

"Nothing like you," she spits with as much venom as she can muster.

"You wish. Now, as much as I love arguing with you, you need to get to the nurse's office." She stares at him in abject horror. Costello's office is on the far side of the school. The probability of her making it there is zero. "What, do you want to not walk for six months?"

"Too far." She shakes her head.

"On your own, yeah." She looks at him for a long second, and then...

"No."

"What?"

"Absolutely not."

"Am I that repulsive to you?"

"Yes." The amount of conviction behind that should hurt him, but Blake is weird and it only serves to make him smile.

"Come on. It's not like I'll drop you." She gives him a look that says,  _Wouldn't put it past you._  "Seriously, I won't. You'd sue me if I tried."

"You are not carrying me, Blake. I am not some damsel in distress!"

"Since I don't take orders from you, I'm gonna need a better reason." The ironic twist of his lips makes her realise that he has won.  _Like always_ , she thinks with some malice. "Haven't got any? Come on, Griffin, you always have an argument."

"You have class. You can't afford to waste time."

"I don't, actually. Reimers isn't here."

"I'm heavy."

The acrid look he gives her answers that. He picks her gearbag up and dangles it from his elbow.

She sighs. "Fine. Only to the door of the office. Then, you leave me alone and go back to... whatever you do."

"Offer accepted. Now, this might hurt..." With gentleness she didn't think he was capable of, Blake slides one arm under the crook of her knees (and she is so glad she wore thick black tights today) and one around her back and hoists her up slowly, doing his utmost to avoid jostling her leg. "There. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

She huffs and lets her head loll back until all she can see of Blake is the freckles spilling down the side of his neck. "Less talking, more walking."

Blake pokes her ribs in retaliation, but otherwise stays silent. The drizzle has long since cleared up, letting a watery sun shine down on them. Despite the lingering chill Blake is warm, heat radiating through his thin shirt. Of course he wouldn't wear the uniform jumper.

When they enter the school the corridors are blissfully vacant, and Blake takes a route lined with more unoccupied classrooms than usual. If anyone saw her arch-nemesis carrying her like a ragdoll, Clarke would have no choice but to leave the school. Blake doesn't make female friends; any girl he's ever so much as talked to has ended up on his lap at some point, even Raven, who prefers machines to people. Clarke doesn't need rumours of involvement with the notorious Bellamy Blake on top of everything else.

"You forgot Octavia's gumshield," she remembers suddenly, as Blake descends the stairs to the faculty wing.

"She'll live," he says dismissively. "You, on the other hand..."

"A sprained ankle won't kill me."

"But it'll take you off the team for the championships, right?" Clarke remains silent. He has the right of it. "They won't make it through without you."

The words hit her slowly. "Was that a compliment?"

"...Shit."

"Blake, you gave me a  _compliment_."

"Is that what construes a compliment to you?" His voice pitches up in disbelief.

She ignores him. "Shut up and write that down for me."

"Another time, maybe." He nods at the door in front of him, and a red crosses stares down at her.

"Put me down." She tries to wriggle from his grasp; instead of resisting her just to be contrary like she expected, he lowers her gingerly and lets her lean on him once she's down. He raps sharply, and the nurse bustles to the door. As the nurse drags her in he throws her bag after her and gives her one last sardonic smile, before the nurse draws the curtain closed to obscure him and begins to fuss over her, clucking like a hen.

 

When Clarke goes to open her locker the next morning, the splint on her ankle making her hobble, a piece of paper taped to its front gives her pause. She chances a quick look around, and, finding no-one in her general vicinity, unfolds it and reads it, paper pressed close to her chest.

 _They won't make it through without you._  The Es are shaped like euro signs with only one dash. Dead giveaway. She tries her very hardest not to smile, folds the note up eight times, nice and neat with all the edges aligned, and slips it into her pocket.

(When she returns to training six weeks later, Octavia’s gumshield is still exactly where she left it, jammed between the slats of the bench.)


	2. come out of the closet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy can't handle chemistry right now. He also can't handle Clarke Griffin, but life thinks otherwise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the prompt "We were both skipping class at the same time in the bathroom but someone passed by and now were hiding in a cramped stall" AU but slightly adapted, because I'm assuming that list was meant for slash couples and unisex bathrooms are Not A Thing in schools.

**Pro:** The closet is empty.

 **Con:** The closet stinks.

 **Pro:** The closet is remote.

 **Con:** The closet is dark.

 **Pro:** Nobody's going to find him here.

 **Con:** Nobody's going to find him here.

After an intense internal debate with himself, Bellamy wrenches the door open and stomps inside. He picks his way through various cleaning supplies and fragments of chairs, ignoring the fact that this hole is vaguely reminiscent of that one care home that he and O got kicked out of because they set a fence on fire.

Honestly, if anyone saw Bellamy Blake hiding in a closet, they'd probably have to look again. The position of student council president (and debate team captain and student of the year and so on and so fucking forth) is not occupied by guys who doss off chemistry, but Bellamy rather enjoys defying other people's expectations, so there's that.

He sighs, and turns on his shitty phone. The screen is cracked from the time Raven tried to integrate it into her metalwork project, but it flickers to life and tells him he has messages (and he is not responding to Roma, he knows she has a perfectly nice boyfriend and Bellamy has A Rule about not messing with people in relationships) and notifications (if only Octavia would stop tagging him in dumb articles about otters and shit) and several scary emails, with headings like 'entry requirements' and 'scholarship grants'.

The prospect of college makes him wince, so instead he shoves his phone in his pocket and sits on a nearby bucket, stretching his legs out as much as he can (which is to say, not very much), tips his head back and recites the names of Roman emperors, the dates of their reign and their key achievements and their causes of death. It calms him down, always has, ever since he and Octavia were old enough to read their mother's grubby volumes of history that came free with some magazine.

He's gotten as far as Trajan when the door bangs open and someone lurches in, tripping over his legs and falling head over heels, prevented from cracking their head open by his thrust-out arms.

A violent sneeze. " _Ugh_."

Only one person he knows is capable of forcing that volume of disgust into a single grunt. "Griffin?"

She casts her baleful blue gaze at him. "Blake. Not in class?"

"Don't look at me like that, you hypocrite."

She scrunches her nose at him, before tugging at his arms. "Look, thanks for stopping me from getting knocked unconscious, but can you let go of me now?"

After a few seconds of confused movement, Griffin removes herself to the other side of the closet, settling on an overturned hoover. "I didn't think somebody graduating in eight months would waste their time in some random closet."

"You want me to suffer through chemistry? That's cruel."

"But chemistry's so-!"

He cuts her off. "Not all of us are science nerds, Griffin. It's okay, but it's soul-crushingly boring. What torture are you escaping?"

"English."

"Thought you'd like it." Griffin seems, to him, to be exactly the kind of girl who read Dickens when she was eight.

"I like reading just fine. I just don't like dissecting it after. In your words, soul-crushingly boring."

He snorts, and watches as Griffin stretches her legs out until the grubby white soles of her dock shoes (and she probably bought the real ones too, not the knock-offs that Octavia makes do with) hit the wall. "How's the leg?"

"Functional." She rotates her ankle, clunking against his makeshift seat. "Went back to training a couple days ago. Missed a few league matches, but that's okay."

He nods, and lets the conversation peter out. Neither he nor Griffin are in the mood to talk, and even if they do they'll probably end up arguing, probably about something interesting like politics or finance, or something stupid and mundane like the menu in the canteen or their shared choice of bolthole. Bellamy likes arguing with her, likes backing her into corners where evidence will not work and making her argue through with the power of sheer persuasion - and if he's anything, he's persuasive, so by that point he's generally won.

Someday, though, Griffin will, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't looking forward to it.

Bellamy's phone hums, jerking him from his reverie, and he pulls it out to check. It's O, of course.

**where u, rav says npt in clasd?!?!**

He rolls his eyes. Octavia texts like she's on speed, and such things as grammar, spelling and legibility are vague concerns to her.

**You shouldn't be on your phone in class.**

A brief moment, and;

**shut tf up. u sick r dossin?????**

He grins as he types;

**I'm in a dark closet with Clarke Griffin.**

Octavia is predictably distressed.

**U LIE LYINF LIAR PANTS**

In response, he takes a blurry, dark picture of Griffin, who is trying not to look at him, and sends it to O. All she needs to see are those ice blue eyes, the blond twist of hair circling her head, and his battered non-uniform tennis shoes (she was the one who scribbled his date of birth in Roman numerals on them) propped up against the wall beside her and;

**BELL NO CAPTAIN CLATKE IS OFF LIMITS!!! STAY AWAY OR I WILL CUTY U**

Griffin shoots him a weird look. "Octavia needed ocular proof," he explains, as his phone continues to buzz with vague death threats.

"She's a great player, you know, but she'd be better if she didn't treat the ball like a blunt instrument of death," she says wryly.

Bellamy smiles, because he'll take all the compliments he can get for O. "She plays just the way I taught her to."

"Like a maniac?" It comes off more brusque than joking, but he decides to let Griffin off. There's no malice in her, really, just a lot of resentment and hurt pride. Same as him.

"Exactly." Griffin sighs at him, and rises abruptly off her bucket. "Where are you going?"

He flings his legs out wider in an attempt to trip her up, but she steps daintily over him to go inspect the back of the closet. "I thought I heard a noise coming from back there."

"It's probably just the pipes. Can't you just stay still?"

"No, not really. It might be a rat." Griffin pokes at something with her foot. "You know how common they are here."

"Yeah, because teenagers can't eat without spewing crumbs all over the place. There shouldn't be any in here, there's no food for them." In any case, he stands up, trying in vain not to crack his head off the ceiling. "In any case, what are you going to do if you find it? Scream and get us caught?"

She glares at him. "I don't scream. Rats don't scare me." She crouches down to peer into an old box. A sneeze makes her rock backwards on her heels as a cloud of dust puffs up, and she swipes some off her face with a disgusted huff. He snickers, and she shoots him a dirty look. "Keep it down, Blake," she hisses. "Do you want someone to find us?"

"It isn't like I'm making all the noise, you're the one poking around in search of rodents."

"Guess I've found one, then." She pokes his leg.

"Low blow, Griffin. Look, just leave the box alone-"

"No," she snaps. "If you don't take orders from me, I don't take orders from you."

"You could stand to cooperate with me, you know, unless that chip on your shoulder won't let you."

"Not a chance." She abandons the box to glower up at him, and suddenly Bellamy is angry because Little Miss Entitled thinks he's below her just because he doesn't have a trust fund.

"Why? Would you be stooping too low?" He frames the last phrase with mocking quotation marks.

"I never said that!"

"But you implied it." He takes one step forward. "I know your family's friends, I know who put up protests against the scholarship scheme, I know who objected against Octavia-"

"I didn't object to Octavia!"

"But you objected to me." Griffin says nothing in her defence. "I knew it, Prin-" He stops mid-nickname when footsteps begin to clack up the corridor, accompanied by inquisitive voices.

Griffin looks up at him in horror, and he thinks that neither of them can afford to get caught dossing class in one tiny space together.

(It's not like Bellamy hasn't earned his reputation, but Griffin is emphatically not his type, short and muscular and fair, and he knows that she'd rather kiss a rat before him.)

They need to _hide_.

Griffin takes action first. Before he knows it he is being yanked down to her level and she is bracing herself in the darkest corner of the closet, his body shielding hers, hiding the tell-tale gleam of her hair.

"Griffin-"

She shushes him, and - of all fucking things - presses her face into his chest, like Octavia does when she needs hugs at one o'clock in the morning because a. "I had a bad dream," or b. "Tigers are going extinct!"

But Griffin is not Octavia, and her fingers splay against his stomach as a voice echoes up the hall. "Hey, I thought I heard something..."

The voice stiffens Griffin's spine, makes her stubby nails dig into him. Only one person could make her react like that, he thinks, because the same person does the same thing to Raven, makes her lip curl and her skittish hands still and her eyes squeeze tightly shut.

"Collins, we're not here to fuck around. We need that lectern for Emerson so he can feel important." Bellamy knows that drawl - the only suitable adjective he can think of is odious - and knows its owner too.

"I'm being serious, Murphy. I swear I heard people in there."

"In a dusty broom closet with rats and asbestos? If they're willing to go in there to be alone, I think we can leave them." Bellamy never thought he would agree with Murphy, but there you go.

Collins ignores him, of course, because he never knows when to stop, always pushes it that little bit too far. The steps grow closer and halt as the handle rattles.

After what seems like an age of holding his breath, marked by the staccato thrum of Griffin's heartbeat, the door creaks open, impeded by a broken plastic chair. Collins sneezes, and Griffin's shoulders tense.

"See, Collins? Nothing in this shithole but some gone off bleach." Murphy's voice floats in the door. "You were hearing things, man. Sure you took your meds today?"

"Fuck off." Collins shuts the door on Murphy's shocked laughter, and eventually their footsteps fade away.

"We're safe," Bellamy eventually mumbles. "Griffin, he's gone. Emerson's on the other side of the school, they won't come back."

She slumps, like the weight of her is too much for her bones to bear, and he gathers his feet beneath him, pushing up with a wince as his knees crack. He stretches out a hand to her, but she doesn't take it, standing up under her own power. She pats distractedly at her hair, pulling out strands of dust. "Why does Finn always find me?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Is he bothering you?"

He regrets the question as soon as it comes out of his mouth; she shoots him an odd look, as if she's surprised by his one shred of common decency, and then laughs, low and husky, without bells or tinkling. "I think I can look out for myself, Blake," she says dryly. "Finn may be a hypocritical sanctimonious fuckhead, but he's still harmless Spacewalker. Besides, Raven might not like him very much any more, but I don't think she'd be happy if you hurt him."

Bellamy sighs frustratedly. "I was... Look, if someone was bothering Octavia, I'd like it if someone kept an eye out for her. You may get special treatment from everyone else, Griffin, but you're not getting it not from me."

"I don't...!" She catches herself. "I don't need to justify myself to you. Everyone else treats me like a human. You treat me like shit."

"I treat you like I was treated. If you're who I think you are, you'll get over it." If Griffin thinks a few brusque words and some slightly mean jokes are 'shit', she has no idea of what he went through. Bad enough that he was from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks, worse that he stood out with his sallow skin and dark eyes, and worse again that he was ten times as smart as the rest of them and made sure they knew it.

(He _was_ kinda a dick to everyone, though, but that cockiness was just a cover for his general lack of confidence until he actually gained it.)

"What? You're not even going to try and be the better person? Two wrongs don't make a right." She's staring at him incredulously, mouth twisted in a sneer.

"I have no misconceptions about myself, Griffin, unlike you."

Her anger deflates suddenly, and she looks at him-

When they were younger and Mom lived in that rented one-bedroom bungalow with a half-moon window above the door he and Octavia used to go skating in the local park. The waterhole was tiny, and the blades on their ice skates were blunt, but Octavia could twirl and pirouette and jump, and he could go as fast as he liked, dragging his little sister behind him as they whirled, laughter echoing off the bare-branched trees.

He used to think Griffin's eyes were like that ice, serrated by the paths of their ice skates, but now they are the pool in the spring thaw, papery ice melted away, leaving life to resume so he and Octavia could crouch by the bank and watch the frogs plop into the water, see the rushes resurrect themselves.

"For a self-confessed asshole, you get the moral high ground far too frequently." A shocked laugh bursts out of him, echoed in the wry smile on Griffin's face.

Her phones buzzes, and she tugs it out - he notes the modern model with a little bitterness - and says, "As nice as this has been, Blake, class is almost over and I don't want to miss biology. We should stagger our departures."

He waves her away. "Go to class, Griffin. God forbid you breathe the same air as me."

She gives a disdainful 'ha!' and pushes past him, hip clanging into his.

When the room is empty, Bellamy presses his hands to his eyes and groans. Christ, he has to be on top of his game with her constantly - it's exhausting. Luckily, he has maths next, and he did the amortisation chapter already out of sheer boredom, so he can zone out and throw things at Miller's head.

 

Octavia sniffs him later as they walk home from school, her bag in his hands. "Bergamot and cedar," she announces, and proceeds to punch him. "Bellamy, I told you-"

"No. Ew, O, who do you think I am? Spacewalker?"

Octavia shakes her head. "One thing about Clarke - if she fits into a stereotype, she defies it. Like me and you."

Bellamy doesn't respond, because he doesn't need to. Octavia knows just as well as he does that no matter how alike he and Griffin supposedly are, there exists a dichotomy between them too vast and old to bridge. "You know she isn't my type. You haven't got anything to worry about, O." He smiles and pulls out that silly cheesy platitude that generally leaves her laughing. "You're always gonna be number one to me."

She starts giggling and kicks him, and them they get into a juvenile shin kicking fight, because they're kids, for now, and they're allowed to, for now.


	3. the beautiful game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> High school AU - Clarke needs to chill, but Wells isn’t interested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is developing a plot. _Someone stop me_. In any case, most everyone is alive in this fic. Whether they’ll stay that way is anyone’s guess.

Laden down with a bowl of tortilla chips and roughly five chopped apples, Clarke turns the tap off with a little difficulty. As she moves into the living room, the whistle shrills, and she sinks into the couch with a sigh, careful not to spill her water all over the place. Wells is already hypnotised by the roar of the Premier League, fans painted in red and white waving scarves and chanting incoherently.

"The new transfer scored," Wells says absently, eyes tracking the path of the ball as it bounces from midfielder to midfielder. "Bit messy, but the goalie went the wrong way so he got lucky."

Clarke tips her head back. "We'll see if he can keep it up." She spends the next few minutes trying to throw bits of apple into her mouth, keeping half an eye on the game. She doesn't support either side, and the outcome won't affect anything for her team, but Wells has supported the currently losing side since they were kids and their fathers used to place sneaky bets on first scorers.

"When's your dad home?" Clarke eventually asks, during a lull in play. "I asked my mother, but you know her."

"Dunno," Wells answers. "He's still campaigning against the death penalty, and they're throwing a load of ugly old cases at him to try and dissuade him, so he won't be home for a while."

Clarke sighs. Thelonius Jaha is a high-up civil servant, an ex-lawyer with military experience. He would have made a good politician, but, for some reason, he didn't go for it. Instead he's a State advisor, along with Abigail Griffin, who gave up her position as a surgeon in the local hospital to accompany him to the capital. "I was hoping Mom would be home. Dad's working overtime again, she's the only one who can get him to take a break."

"Is that where he is?"

Clarke nods, and turns on her phone to check. Her dad's last message ( **Don't wait up xxx** ) was yesterday, at ten o'clock. "I know they're pitching to a big contractor, but..."

"Hey, don't worry. He always comes back, doesn't he? And then you'll be trying to get rid of him before he sets the kitchen on fire trying to make you carbonara."

Clarke snorts, because it's true. Her father, an accomplished aeronautical engineer who almost made it past the Armstrong line, once exploded a microwave when he tried to cook her a birthday cake in it. He can, however, make really good coffee, but only with a Bunsen burner. "True." A chant emanates from the speakers. "Offside!"

The game gets good from there, and for the next hour she finds herself spellbound by the weaving pattern of the ball and the grace of the players. Football probably shouldn't be soothing to her, but it is, simply by virtue of its familiarity. She and Wells have been watching football together since they were old enough to understand that the guy wearing the black and white jersey isn’t actually a player.

Clarke honestly doesn't know what she did to deserve Wells. He's the kind of friend you only read about, the next-door neighbour who spent more time in her garden than his, the accomplice who minded her pet bugs when Abby made her get rid of them, the kid who broke her goals once when he hung off them for two hours as a dare, the player two to her player one, the shoulder to cry on, the constant presence at her elbow, her brother by choice. They swore it when they were kids, stole a scalpel from Abby's medical kid and shook hands, their palms daubed red, and then they did wheelies up and down the neighbourhood. He let her paint his nails at three in the morning on her fourteenth birthday with her hair tangled in curlers, she sat beside him in the waiting room when her mom was operating on his mom, he turns up with a pint of cookie dough ice cream and an Oscar-winning movie once a month, she painted the constellations on his bedroom ceiling, he's dislocated her arm and she's broken his nose. The longest length of time they've gone without talking - without mirror signaling from their bedroom windows, without texting each other nonsensical strings of emojis, without video calling each other on school trips from separate dormitories - was three and a half months, during the Finncident, as they've christened it.

It was torture.

But however much she loves Wells - and she does love him - he can get sort of weird and protective. She guesses it's some older brother instinct, which is stupid, because she's four months older than him. Mostly it happens when she hurts herself in sport, when she gets a bad grade, when people start talking about her behind her back, and those times she can handle it.

She can't handle it when it involves people - more specifically, boys, and the occasional girl.

The microwave is groaning, reheating curry as a pan of rice simmers on the hob. Clarke is digging in the freezer for naan when Wells broaches the subject.

"Mel told me you weren't in English the other day. What was up?"

Clarke considers lying - _I was in a debate team meeting, I was talking to the vice principal, I was sick_ \- but she doesn't lie to Wells if she can help it, and if she does, he can usually tell. "I was dossing."

"Clarke-" And there's that trademark sanctimonious Jaha tone.

"I wasn't up for another round of active Frost discussion. Good fences make good neighbours, I get it, we don't have to dissect it."

Wells stays silent, but she can feel the disapproval radiating from him. Wells was always more obedient than her, unwilling to bend any rule; Clarke views them more as reasonable limits, to be stretched and tested and, if they're bad enough, broken. "Where'd you go? I know you weren't in the library, I asked."

"Wells, do I need you to mind me?" He doesn't respond, which makes his opinion abundantly clear. "Look, I went and sat in a broom closet for forty minutes. I sneezed a lot, it was fine."

She’s lying. It wasn't fine. Bad enough she got stuck with Bellamy Blake, asshole extraordinaire, but then Finn-

Blake must have thought she was quivering out of fear, like some little girl in a cliché pop song. It wasn't fear of Finn she felt. It was fear of what she might do to him. She wanted to punch him again, sock him in the face and spit at him like she did last May - _how dare you, how dare you do that to Raven, how dare you do that to me, who gave you the right?_ Only Blake kept her back, restraining her with an embrace and the frantic thrum of his heart against her cheek. She counted two hundred and sixty eight beats until they were safe.

"Clarke?" Wells voice snaps her back to reality as the rice bubbles over; she begins to stir frantically. "Clarke, you-"

"Wells, not now."

"You were in there with someone!"

Once the rice is under control, she throws the wooden spoon onto the counter. "I don't even know why I try to keep things from you."

"Who was it?"

She has to tell him the truth, no matter how bad it sounds. "Bellamy Blake."

Wells stares at her for an interminable moment. "And he's alive?"

She laughs, because if somebody had told her that she would be able to spend forty minutes in an enclosed space with Blake without coming to blows, her reaction would be the exact same as Wells'. "We did get into our usual argument," which is class privilege, what else, "but otherwise he was a surprisingly decent human being." The way he'd smiled when she told him Octavia was a good player - and she is, in the way an enraged bull is good at destroying things - had almost made her smile in response, such was the power of it. Blake has far too much charisma for his own good.

"He didn't even hit on you?" Wells raises an eyebrow, because everyone knows Bellamy Blake's reputation. She doesn't blame him, really. If she were that attractive (which Blake undeniably is) and could get away with it without consequences like he does, she'd be the exact same.

"Don't think so. Besides, I'm not his type. I'm not tall enough, or dark enough, and I think he likes them a bit skinnier. His loss." Clarke tilts her hip and fake-pouts, and in response Wells flexes and tries for a Blake-style smirk. They manage to hold those poses for about five seconds before they dissolve into snorting laughter. The microwave dings, and Wells goes to take care of it as she pulls the rice off the hob, still smiling.

Wells doesn't know exactly how she feels about Finn. He's biased; he always disliked him, gave out to her for consorting with the guy who tried to bungee-jump off the school with the help of every fire extinguisher he could find, but Clarke ignored him to her peril. She can't talk with him about Finn because he looks at her like he expected better from her, like it was her fault.

It wasn't. How was she supposed to know that he had a long-term girlfriend? How was she supposed to know that said girlfriend would transfer to their school and catch them mid-embrace? How was she supposed to know that punching him would get her suspended?

The only positive of the whole situation was Raven. After giving up Finn as a bad job (and after a brief liaison with Bellamy Blake that ended amiably) she got a summer internship at Griffin Engineering. Clarke, who was helping out with her father, did her best to avoid her, going so far as to hide in the luckily deactivated centrifuge, but the older girl cornered her in the soldering room.

They ended up destroying the matching necklaces he gave them, deer and raven melting together into one indistinguishable blob. Raven later fashioned it into matching bracelets, simple bands of blackened metal, the only difference between them the word engraved on the inside; _Princess_ on Clarke's, and _Mechanic_ on Raven's.

They've been pretty much inseparable ever since.

"Clarke?" The plates clink onto the table as Wells addresses her.

"Yeah?" She locates the serving spoon, and glances up to find him looking at her, the barest hint of a smile still on his face. "I'm your friend. I know you don't like to do it, but..." He hesitates, and inhales. "If you need help, I'm here."

"I know." She falters, because she and Wells have never been emotional, not in the ‘spill your heart out and let them put it back together’ way. He was there when she had a blazing row with her mother ten minutes after she came home and Abby jetted straight off again, and she was there on his mom's first anniversary, kneeling in front of the apple blossom tree that marked her, but they never spoke, just held on until the storm passed. There aren't words for what Wells means to her, so she doesn't try, just starts ladling rice into his bowl until he starts protesting that he _did_ eat today, "and are you gonna eat any yourself?"

She flicks a glob of rice at him, hits him in the nose, and they waste about half the food in the ensuing foodfight, but by the time they actually start eating Clarke is laughing so hard her stomach hurts, and the thoughts of Finn have evaporated.

She squeezes her eyes shut for a millisecond, and tells herself that everything will be okay.


	4. i've had the time of my life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven proposes an impromptu movie night; Bellamy is not amused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recently watched Dirty Dancing for the first time; I would have watched it a lot sooner if someone had told me there was a class divide romance in it. (Nobody puts Clarke in the corner.)

"Seriously, though, I think Tsing's conducting medical trials on students. Monty told me Harper went in to talk to her about her last biology result and she came out looking all... haunted and shit. D'you get me?" The pause screen flickers, casting a strange glow on Raven's face. Bellamy doesn't dignify her with any response but a sceptical scowl. Raven rolls her eyes. "Whatever. You know I'm right, I'm always right."

"Yeah, when equations are involved." He restarts the game; Raven immediately fires at him. "Jesus!"

"Shut your whore mouth, Bellamy Blake. I open up my home to you, and this is the thanks I get?"

"Friendly fire? Really?"

"Revenge, best served artificially."

"As opposed to naturally?" He pauses. "Do you have an actual gun?"

"Maybe. I have a bra holster, it's pretty awesome."

He raises an eyebrow. "Oh, so that's what that was." Raven starts snorting - she snorts when she laughs, it's wholly unattractive and brilliant - and goes after him with her melee weapon, making him squawk. "Leave the frying pan out of this!"

After a few minutes of intense scuffling, they clear the map, and Raven throws her controller down. "Think that's enough zombie therapy for today." She pulls her legs up onto the couch and throws them across his lap. "Why'd Octavia throw you out, anyways? You never explained, just stormed into my house and flopped around like a drama queen."

"I did not _flop_." Raven raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow, and he honestly can't argue with her when she does that, it's too intimidating. "She's doing a history project with Monty and Jasper. She didn't want me in the vicinity because, apparently, I take over when history gets involved." He tries his best not to sound hurt.

"You're such a nerd. I can't believe people think you're cool." She pokes his cheek. "She's kinda right, though. You get this weird _gleam_ in your eyes-"

"Shut up. I raised her, you'd think she'd let me in our own home, but nope. Anyway, your house is the closest, so I decided to inflict me on you." He changes the subject before Raven mocks him for pouting (even though he is most emphatically _not_ ) and prods at her bare knee. "Where's your brace?" The walking aid is conspicuously absent. Raven's always adding to it, little twists of steel and dyed fabric panels and broken gears engraved with people's names in lieu of signatures.

"You know I had a summer placement at Griffin Engineering, right?" Bellamy nods; he remembers how horrified Raven was when he informed her that the company was owned by the figurative other woman's father. Luckily, Raven didn't kill Clarke Griffin, and they actually ended up friends. "Well, one of the interns has a friend who's a biomedical engineer specialising in orthotics, so he said he'd get her to take a look at it."

"Intern." Bellamy lets the word hang for a brief moment before Raven cracks.

"Kyle Wick. Don't say a _word_ ," she warns. "I can ruin you in a second."

"Calm it, Reyes. Guy'll be lucky if you hook him." He waggles his eyebrows and makes a theatrical purring sound. Raven bursts out laughing and whacks him.

"I thought we agreed not to mention the sex."

"But it was such good sex!" Bellamy should know, he's experienced enough.

Raven contemplates this statement for a while, before agreeing. "You're right. Like, best bad idea ever." She bumps his shoulder. "Glad we're cool now, though. Bros before hoes and all that."

He gives her a withering look. "Am I your bro now?"

"You're pretty primo older brother material. Hot, overprotective, and kinda an ass."

He gives her his best shit-eating grin. "I won't argue with you."

Raven shakes her head as her buzzer sounds, and she shoots off the couch with as speed as she can muster, which, it has to be said, isn't very much, considering she's dragging one of her legs behind her. "Reyes." A tinny voice echoes out of the speaker, and Raven's eyes widen. "Crap, I forgot. No, come on up, it's fine." She presses the button, and makes a face at Bellamy.

"Who is it? Please tell me it's not Spacewalker."

"God, no, Bellamy. It's just a friend. Look, I know being an asshole is your thing-"

"Damn straight."

"But you must promise me you'll be nice, okay? I know you're capable of it, so please. For me."

He nods reluctantly. "I'll be polite. Hell, I might even be pleasant."

Raven doesn't look so sure. "I doubt it."

Her misgivings are rendered true when the door creaks open to reveal none other than Clarke Griffin, blonde hair twisted back into a sloppy bun. "I come bearing icecream," she announces, which is followed by, "Blake?"

" _Raven_." He makes her name sound like a threat. "Explain."

Raven crosses her arms. "Clarke and I have this movie night thing on Saturdays, but I'm busy tomorrow so we said we'd do it Friday instead, and then you waltzed in and I couldn't exactly throw you out when Octavia had as well, could I?" She sighs. "I know you've got this juvenile nemesis thing going on-" Both Bellamy and Griffin begin to protest, but Raven cuts them off. "Shut up! God, you're both mature enough to at least _try_ to tolerate each other for one night." She looks at them desperately, doing that big liquid brown eyes thing.

Griffin stays silent. Bellamy sighs, and says, "Screw this. I'm calling Octavia. I'm going home."

Raven dives at him as he pulls his phone out, and he has only barely managed to speed dial O when she seizes the phone from him. "Octavia, hey! Yeah, he came over here and sulked, but we killed zombies so he's better know. Clarke and I are watching-" Raven pauses and looks at her.

"Dirty Dancing," she offers, and Bellamy knows that nothing is going to keep Octavia from Raven's apartment and Patrick Swayze.

"So do you want to come over? Bring Monty and Jasper, I need to talk to Monty anyway, Sinclair assigned me to be his mentor for his metalwork project. See you in five!" She ends the call and smirks. "I win."

Bellamy grumbles and collapses back down on the couch. "You just doomed us to Jasper. I mean, his voice is still breaking."

"Jasper Jordan's a good kid." Griffin settles herself on the battered arm chair, crossing her legs and propping a cheek on her fist, looking every inch like she's about to pass judgement.

"I'm not saying that he's bad or anything, just his voice hurts my ears. Raven, the Octavia rule is hereby in effect."

"Don't get your older brother boxers in a twist, Blake. I don't have any booze to corrupt your sister with anyway." Raven digs through Griffin's bag, extracting a tub of mint chocolate chip, two packets of popcorn and a white DVD.

"The Octavia rule?" Griffin queries.

"Bellamy's weird and won't let anybody drink around Octavia. I don't really get it. I mean, she's going to drink anyway. Wouldn't you prefer it if she were doing it where you can keep an eye on her?"

"I want her to be a kid for as long as she can be." He tries to sound gruff, but Raven's eyes soften and she ruffles his hair as she passes by into the kitchen, popcorn in hand.

Griffin grabs the DVD and begins to wrestle with Raven's homemade entertainment system, which is a baffling conglomeration of old VCR parts and modern game consoles with no discernible pause, play or eject buttons. She seems to be roughly familiar with it, as the tray springs out quickly. Soon the TV is on again, and before long the title screen pops up, playing bad 80s music. Bellamy groans.

"You don't like Dirty Dancing?" Griffin glances back at him from where she's crouched on her haunches before the TV.

"It's not that I don't like it, it's just... I've seen it too much."

"He knows all the lines," Octavia offers as she bounces in the door. "Totally my fault. Hey, Captain!" Griffin smiles and moves to the door to receive Octavia's hug, bearing it without betraying the pain she must be in; his little sister sees physical affection as a contest. Jasper and Monty run into the room, wheezing.

"Octavia ran," Monty explains. Jasper lies spread eagled on the floor.

"I am dead," he proclaims. "Octavia, you owe me CPR."

Raven bustles in, loaded with popcorn; she tosses the bags onto the grounds and joins Clarke in her efforts to haul them off the floor as Octavia plops down beside him. As they succeed in getting the boys vertical, Octavia whispers in his ear; "Clarke? Again?"

"Raven just sprung her on me. Wasn't my choice."

She makes a face. "Just promise you'll be nice, right? But not too nice."

"Jesus, O, I'm not gonna punch her, and I'm not gonna jump her. Promise." Octavia makes a disparaging noise, and he elects to ignore her.

Before long, everyone is seated. Raven is settled in her reclining armchair, legs thrown out, Monty and Jasper are throwing popcorn into each other's mouths from where they sprawl on the rug, and Griffin has, somehow, ended up beside him, pressed up against the arm of the couch in an unsubtle attempt to put as much space between them as possible.

Bellamy represses a sigh and turns his attention to Jennifer Grey's distinctly inappropriate clothes (they _really_ didn't do shorts like that in the sixties) and refrains from joining in with Octavia when she starts singing.

The movie passes without incident - Monty and Jasper keep mentioning the watermelons at inopportune moments, Griffin makes them shut up for the training montage, Raven throws popcorn at the screen every time the scumbag waiter and scumbag son appear, Bellamy complains at all of Patrick Swayze's shirtless scenes, and Octavia almost starts crying when she makes the lift - and by the end, Griffin has relaxed, slouching as she joins in with the final number until she's almost shoulder to shoulder with him.

"What number is that?" Bellamy asks once the credits start rolling.

"Thirty-two," Octavia replies. He groans, and she elbows him. "You love it really."

He makes a disgusted noise, tipping his head back and squeezing his eyes shut.

When he opens his eyes, Octavia and Jasper are clanging around the room cleaning up, and Raven and Monty are conferring over his metalwork project. Griffin is texting someone.

"Wells," she explains. "He likes Dirty Dancing almost as much as you do."

"He had a lucky escape." She snorts. "I wouldn't have pegged you for a teen movie girl, Griffin."

"It's just escapism." She grimaces. "Wells says I project onto Baby, which is probably true."

"Rich daddy's girl looking to make a difference in the world... God, that's true, actually."

"Like I said. Pure escapism." She shoves her phone in her pocket. "I wouldn't make the lift though. I'd probably plough straight through the poor boy."

Bellamy snickers, because it's true. He's seen Griffin playing football, and she's well able to flatten anyone who gets in her way. When he darts a glance at her, she is almost smiling, the faint glow of the TV screen turning her eyes to silver.

Octavia pops up behind him and starts shaking his shoulders, making him yelp. "We need to stop trespassing on Raven's hospitality. Captain, do you mind giving Monty and Jasper a lift? I think they live near you."

Griffin nods and begins to figure out addresses with Jasper. Octavia hooks her arms around Bellamy and rests her chin on his head. "Get off me. You're a pain, do you know that?"

"Love you too." Griffin watches in amusement as he struggles feebly under Octavia's iron grip.

"Get off my couch, Blake Bunch." Raven limps over to them, accompanied by Monty. "You two, you're like dinner and a show."

Octavia relaxes her grip, giving Bellamy a chance to escape and stand up. "You're so full of it, Reyes. C'mon, O, we're not welcome here." He shoots a glare at Raven, who returns it with an added middle finger. Griffin is laughing as the door shuts behind them. Luckily, there aren't any stairs to navigate; Raven lives on the ground floor, owing to her status as a monoplegic.

The night is cool and cloudless, giving him a clear view of the cold-eyed stars above him. He can make out what he thinks is Mercury, hovering by Virgo's hip. Octavia is humming under her breath, salsaing as she walks; forward back back, back back forward. "I didn't know Clarke and Raven got on," she says, swinging around her invisible partner,

"They worked together last summer. I guess they got over him." Bellamy glances around carefully, because the neighbourhood he and Octavia and Raven live in is, to put it mildly, rough. There are shoes strung over almost every power line, most of the signs are covered in ugly graffiti, and every month his door is daubed with a certain colour, boundaries shifting in a blaze of red and blue. He just keeps his head down and does his best to keep his little sister out of it. Most of them are harmless kids that didn't get the leg-up he and Octavia did, but there's a few men and women that Bellamy knows to avoid on sight; he crosses the street when he recognises their license plates, he walks out of the store when he hears their names mentioned, he stays away from their haunts and their people, eyes staring sightlessly ahead and hands conspicuously open and empty.

(The one time he wasn't careful enough - there's a gravestone in a cemetery and a scar on his waist and an age gap between himself and his peers to remind him of that mistake.)

"I'm glad Raven got over it... unlike you." Octavia bumps into him with her hip. "Like, you could. I know you're good at holding grudges, but I've seen you put them aside before."

"It's a matter of principle, O. And principal, I guess." He shoves his hands in his pockets. "Just drop it, will you? All that dancing put me in a bad mood."

Octavia takes that as her cue to start sashaying up the sidewalk, arms thrown wide; Bellamy just shakes his head and laughs as she shimmies, feet staccato against the concrete, her cacophonous humming drifting up into the still night air.


End file.
